Delivery driver says he didn’t know girl was 15

A 15-year-old girl slept with a pizza delivery driver so he would buy her alcohol to take to a party, a jury was told.

One of Tahir Mehmood’s former colleagues made the claim at Swindon Crown Court as she gave evidence at the rape trial of the 27-year-old man.

Toni Cox said the girl seemed quite proud of what she had done and was laughing as she told her about it.

The former Domino’s worker, now aged 18, said: “Because she was going to a party and needed alcohol, and if he got it she would sleep with him.”

Miss Cox, who worked at the West Swindon branch, said she also thought the 15-year-old was putting it on when she said she was scared of him in the days after.

Under cross examination by Tessa Hingston, for the Crown, she said she was not lying and was not jealous of the friendship the girl had had with the defendant.

Earlier Mehmood had told the jury that he did not rape the 15-year-old and was not aware she was under age when they had sex in the summer of 2012.

It is alleged that after agreeing to pick up the youngster, who said she needed a lift home, he took her to an empty house, plied her with wine and forced himself on her.

He insisted the schoolgirl had asked him to buy her the drink, at about 11pm, and then told him not to take her home.

Speaking through an Urdu interpreter he said she told him to go to Tesco to buy her the bottle of wine and he took her to an empty bungalow he owned.

“She said: ‘I want to drink and I want to sit down’ and I thought that was the responsible place to go,” he said.

“I asked her 10, 50, times ‘Take your wine with you, go home,’ but she said ‘I don’t drink with my family.’”

Mehmood, who is married with four stepchildren, said he did not know her age and insisted that the sex was consensual.

And he said the girl’s 16-year-old friend’s claims that he had also pestered her for sex were not true, telling the jury: “It’s all lies.”Miss Hingston put to him: “The truth is that you raped her,” to which he replied: “No”.

She showed him CCTV of them arriving at the supermarket with her yards behind him saying it showed him leading the way, not her, but he insisted she wanted the wine.

Mehmood said he had often given both girls lifts home in his car, but while he got on very well with the younger one, there had never been anything sexual until that night.

He said he very rarely drank alcohol and when the girl told the court he picked out the wine calling it “my favourite” she was wrong.

He denied being called ‘Paedo’and ‘Michael Jackson’ by people at work after gossip got out that he had slept with the 15-year-old – before she went to the police.

Mehmood, of Ermin Street, denies rape and sexual activity with a child and the case continues.